John Ringo, the famous gun-fighting gentleman, is found dead in Turkey Creek Canyon, Arizona.

Romanticized in both life and death, John Ringo was supposedly a Shakespeare-quoting gentleman whose wit was as quick as his gun. Some believed he was college educated, and his sense of honor and courage was sometimes compared to that of a British lord. In truth, Ringo was not a formally educated man, and he came from a struggling working-class Indiana family that gave him few advantages. Yet, he does appear to have been better read than most of his associates, and he clearly cultivated an image as a refined gentleman.

By the time he was 12, Ringo was already a crack shot with either a pistol or rifle. He left home when he was 19, eventually ending up in Texas, where in 1875 he became involved in a local feud known as the “Hoodoo War.” He killed at least two men, but seems to have either escaped prosecution, or when arrested, escaped his jail cell. By 1878, he was described as “one of the most desperate men in the frontier counties” of Texas, and he decided it was time to leave the state.

In 1879, Ringo resurfaced in southeastern Arizona, where he joined the motley ranks of outlaws and gunslingers hanging around the booming mining town of Tombstone. Nicknamed “Dutch,” Ringo had a reputation for being a reserved loner who was dangerous with a gun. He haunted the saloons of Tombstone and was probably an alcoholic. Not long after he arrived, Ringo shot a man dead for refusing to join him in a drink. Somehow, he again managed to avoid imprisonment by temporarily leaving town. He was not involved in the infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in 1881, but he did later challenge Doc Holliday (one of the survivors of the O.K. Corral fight) to a shootout. Holliday declined and citizens disarmed both men.

The manner of Ringo’s demise remains something of a mystery. He seems to have become despondent in 1882, perhaps because his family had treated him coldly when he had earlier visited them in San Jose. Witnesses reported that he began drinking even more heavily than usual. On this day in 1882, he was found dead in Turkey Creek Canyon outside of Tombstone. It looked as if Ringo had shot himself in the head and the official ruling was that he had committed suicide. Some believed, however, that he had been murdered either by his drinking friend Frank “Buckskin” Leslie or a young gambler named “Johnny-Behind-the-Deuce.” To complicate matters further, Wyatt Earp later claimed that he had killed Ringo. The truth remains obscure to this day.

Sheriff Pat Garrett shoots Henry McCarty, popularly known as Billy the Kid, to death at the Maxwell Ranch in New Mexico. Garrett, who had been tracking the Kid for three months after the gunslinger had escaped from prison only days before his scheduled execution, got a tip that Billy was holed up with friends. While Billy was gone, Garrett waited in the dark in his bedroom. When Billy entered, Garrett shot him to death.

Back on April 1, 1878, Billy the Kid ambushed Sheriff William Brady andone deputy in Lincoln, New Mexico, after ranch owner John Tunstall had been murdered. Billy had worked at Tunstall’s ranch and was outraged by his employer’s slaying-vowing to hunt down every man responsible. Sheriff Brady and his men, who had been affiliated with rival ranchers, were involved with the gang that killed Tunstall on February 18. Billy’s retaliatory attack left Brady and Deputy George Hindman dead. Although only 18 years old at the time, Billy had now committed as many as 17 murders.

Following his indictment for the murder of Sheriff Brady, Billy the Kid was the most wanted man in the West. Evading posses sent to capture him, he eventually struck a deal with the new governor of New Mexico: In return for his testimony against the perpetrators of the ongoing ranch wars in the state, Billy would be set free. Although he kept his word about the testimony, he began to distrust the promise that he would be released and so he escaped.

Once a fugitive, Billy killed a few more men, including the gunslinger Joe Grant, who had challenged him to a showdown. Legend has it that Billy managed to get a hold of Grant’s gun prior to the fight and made sure that an empty chamber was up first in the man’s revolver. When it came time to fire, only Billy’s gun went off and Grant was left dead.

Legendary Sheriff Pat Garrett finally brought Billy the Kid in to stand trial. The judge sentenced Billy the Kid to hang until “you are dead, dead, dead.” Billy reportedly responded, “And you can go to hell, hell, hell.” Two weeks before his scheduled execution, Billy escaped, killing two guards in the process.

Garrett mounted yet another posse to bring in the Kid. After tracing him to the Maxwell Ranch, Garrett shot him to death. No legal charges were brought against him since the killing was ruled a justifiable homicide.

Young Johan Jonsen, the future “Mad Trapper of Rat River,” leaves Norway with his family and heads for America.

When he was six years old, the Norwegian Jonsen headed for America with his family on this day in 1904. His Swedish father settled the family on a barren 320-acre homestead in North Dakota. At an early age, Jonsen became a skilled outdoorsman and hunter, and by the time he was in his teens was bored with the backbreaking life of a high plains farmer. He struck up a friendship with a local rustler and gunslinger named Bert Dekler who helped him refine his expertise with a pistol.

In 1915, at the age of 17, Jonsen committed his first robbery, seizing $2,800 from the Farmers’ State Bank of Medicine Lake, Montana. He managed a successful escape, but was later apprehended in Wyoming for horse theft and returned to Montana. He served three years in the Montana State Penitentiary before being released and quickly returning to a life in crime.

Because he used a variety of aliases, it is difficult to know exactly how many crimes Jonsen committed, but they were apparently abundant. Yet, as he grew older Jonsen began to retreat into the wilderness, where he increasingly became an antisocial hermit. By 1930, he was living in a cabin along the Rat River in an isolated far northeastern section of the Canadian Yukon. There he tolerated no visitors and survived by trapping beaver. He had not totally abandoned his larcenous ways, though–other trappers complained that he pillaged their trap lines.

In late December 1931, an officer for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and three other men arrived at Jonsen’s cabin with a search warrant to investigate the claims that he was pilfering from other trappers’ lines. When the Mountie knocked, Jonsen replied by shooting through the door, wounding the officer in the chest. The four men fled, but a larger force returned soon after and began a 15-hour attack with gunfire and dynamite that failed to force Jonsen’s surrender. The following day, a blizzard swept in and Jonsen managed to sneak off obscured by the thick curtains of snow. A massive manhunt began that eventually involved scores of men aided by airplanes, dog teams, and skilled Indian guides. Yet, Jonsen-traveling on foot with almost no food-managed to avoid capture for more than month.

On February 17, 1932, the posse found Jonsen and trapped him on the ice in the middle of a frozen river. Still Jonsen refused to surrender. He shot one of his pursuers before the posse killed him with a massive volley of bullets. Having survived 45 days traveling through some of the roughest country in the world with almost no food, the once robust “Mad Trapper of Rat River” was skin and bones. His corpse weighed less than 100 pounds.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, two of the few white men who had actually seen the mysterious territory of the Far West, help form a new company to exploit the region’s abundant fur-bearing animals.

In September 1806, William Clark and Meriwether Lewis completed their epic journey to the Pacific Ocean, arriving back in St. Louis after more than two years in the western wilderness. Except for the difficult crossing of the Rocky Mountains, the expedition team had traveled by river. On the journey, they were overwhelmed by the abundance for beaver, otter, and other fur-bearing creatures they saw. The territory was ripe for fur trapping, they reported to President Thomas Jefferson.

Both Lewis and Clark recognized that sizeable fortunes could be made in fur trapping, and they were not averse to using their exclusive knowledge to gain a share of the profits. Two years after their return, Lewis and Clark helped organize the St. Louis Missouri River Fur Company. Among their partners were the experienced fur traders and businessmen Manuel Lisa, Pierre Choteau, and Auguste Choteau.

Lewis, whom Jefferson had already appointed to the governorship of Louisiana Territory, was presumably a silent partner, and for good reason. The new company planned to mix public and private interests in potentially unethical ways. During their earlier voyage west, Lewis and Clark had convinced an Upper-Missouri River Mandan Indian named Big White to go east and meet President Jefferson. Lewis had promised Big White that the American government would later return him to his people. Now the St. Louis Missouri River Fur Company proposed to use public money to mount a private expedition to take Big White home in the spring of 1809. Once Big White was home safely, however, the expedition would continue on to begin fur trading on the Yellowstone River, where it would enjoy a monopoly guaranteed by Governor Lewis.

In May 1809, the hybrid public-private expedition headed up the Missouri River. The men safely returned Big White to his home and inaugurated a fairly successful fur trading operation. Whatever questions there might have been about Governor Lewis’ conflicting interests in the company soon became moot: He either killed himself or was murdered on October 11, 1809, while traveling on the Natchez Trace in Tennessee. Clark continued to be involved with the company for several years, and no one ever raised questions about the ethics of his participation. Standards of behavior were often lax on the frontier, and it was not unusual for private and governmental interests to become confused. For all but the most critical observer, Clark’s actions would have been acceptable. The St. Louis Missouri River Fur Company the two men helped create endured until 1825 and was instrumental in furthering the exploration and settlement of the Far West.

Douglas Corrigan, the last of the early glory-seeking fliers, takes off from Floyd Bennett field in Brooklyn, New York, on a flight that would finally win him a place in aviation history.

Eleven years earlier, American Charles A. Lindbergh had become an international celebrity with his solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Corrigan was among the mechanics who had worked on Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis aircraft, but that mere footnote in the history of flight was not enough for the Texas-born aviator. In 1938, he bought a 1929 Curtiss Robin aircraft off a trash heap, rebuilt it, and modified it for long-distance flight. In July 1938, Corrigan piloted the single-engine plane nonstop from California to New York. Although the transcontinental flight was far from unprecedented, Corrigan received national attention simply because the press was amazed that his rattletrap aircraft had survived the journey.

Almost immediately after arriving in New York, he filed plans for a transatlantic flight, but aviation authorities deemed it a suicide flight, and he was promptly denied. Instead, they would allow Corrigan to fly back to the West Coast, and on July 17 he took off from Floyd Bennett field, ostentatiously pointed west. However, a few minutes later, he made a 180-degree turn and vanished into a cloudbank to the puzzlement of a few onlookers.

Twenty-eight hours later, Corrigan landed his plane in Dublin, Ireland, stepped out of his plane, and exclaimed, “Just got in from New York. Where am I?” He claimed that he lost his direction in the clouds and that his compass had malfunctioned. The authorities didn’t buy the story and suspended his license, but Corrigan stuck to it to the amusement of the public on both sides of the Atlantic. By the time “Wrong Way” Corrigan and his crated plane returned to New York by ship, his license suspension had been lifted, he was a national celebrity, and a mob of autograph seekers met him on the gangway.

On this day in 1925, Volume One of Adolf Hitler’s philosophical autobiography, Mein Kampf, is published. It was a blueprint of his agenda for a Third Reich and a clear exposition of the nightmare that will envelope Europe from 1939 to 1945. The book sold a total of 9,473 copies in its first year.

Hitler began composing his tome while sitting in Landsberg prison, convicted of treason for his role in the infamous Beer Hall Putsch in which he and his minions attempted to stage a coup and grasp control of the government in Bavaria. It ended in disaster, with some allies deserting and others falling into the hands of the authorities. Hitler was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment (he would serve only nine months). His time in the old fortress at Landsberg was hardly brutal; he was allowed guests and gifts, and was treated as something of a cult hero. He decided to put his leisure time to good use and so began dictating Volume One of his opus magnus to Rudolph Hess, a loyal member of the German National Socialist Party and fellow revolutionary.

The first part of Mein Kampf, subtitled “A Reckoning,” is a 400-plus page diatribe on the problems besetting Germany—the French, who wished to dismember Germany; the lack of lebesraum, “living space,” and the need to expand east into Russia; and the baleful influence of “mongrel” races. For Hitler, the state was not an economic entity, but a racial one. Racial purity was an absolute necessity for a revitalized Germany. “[F]or men do not perish as the result of lost wars, but by the loss… of pure blood.”

As for leadership, Hitler’s Third Reich would mimic the Prussian ideal of absolute authoritarian rule. “There must be no majority decisions, but only responsible persons… Surely every man will have advisers… but the decision will be made by one man.”

So there it was: War with France, war with Russia, the elimination of “impure” races, and absolute dictatorship. Hitler laid out his political agenda a full 14 years before the outbreak of war.

Volume Two of Mein Kampf, focusing on national socialism, was published in 1927. Sales of the complete work remained mediocre throughout the 1920s. It was not until 1933, the first year of Hitler’s tenure as chancellor of Germany, that sales soared to over 1 million. Its popularity reached the point where it became a ritual to give a newly married couple a copy.

That is very interesting back story about the Lewis-Clark expeditions Rem. Not one that you would see in history books.

You will see that in Canadian history up here. It is all part of the package. History is everything and every where. To exclude history to only US is only making the narrow vision of so many which is now showing up so much more with the American people. No disrespect on that one , but my brothers nieces just got home schooled few years back on that American plan and they failed big time on history except American. For one to excel in life history plays a big part and should be excepted by all and all nations history such as I learned., and as my kids learned and my grandson will learn. With out world history and why it was that way you will never have a broad picture as to the scope of things. I am truly blessed that I learned world history just not Canadian. I also learned a lot about American history, how many of you can say the same thing about Canadian history. Your doing a good job Rem but be more open minded on history.

Doc Holliday commits his first murder, killing a man for shooting up his New Mexico saloon.

Despite his formidable reputation as a deadly gunslinger, Doc Holliday only engaged in eight shootouts during his life, and it has only been verified that he killed two men. Still, the smartly dressed ex-dentist from Atlanta had a remarkably fearless attitude toward death and danger, perhaps because he was slowly dying from tuberculosis.

In 1879, Holliday settled in Las Vegas, New Mexico, where he opened a saloon with a partner. Holliday spent his evenings gambling in the saloon and he seemed determined to stress his health condition by heavy drinking. A notorious cad, Holliday also enjoyed the company of the dance hall girls that the partners hired to entertain the customers–which sometimes sparked trouble.

On this day in 1879, a former army scout named Mike Gordon tried to persuade one of Holliday’s saloon girls to quit her job and run away with him. When she refused, Gordon became infuriated. He went out to the street and began to fire bullets randomly into the saloon. He didn’t have a chance to do much damage–after the second shot, Holliday calmly stepped out of the saloon and dropped Gordon with a single bullet. Gordon died the next day.

The following year, Holliday abandoned the saloon business and joined his old friend Wyatt Earp in Tombstone, Arizona. There he would kill his second victim, during the famous “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” in October 1881. During the subsequent six years, Holliday assisted at several other killings and wounded a number of men in gun battles. His hard drinking and tuberculosis eventually caught up with him, and he retired to a Colorado health resort where he died in 1887. Struck by the irony of such a peaceful end to a violent life, his last words reportedly were “This is funny.”

Having made the mistake of homesteading on land previously controlled by a Wyoming cattle king, homesteaders Ella Watson and James Averell are accused of rustling and hanged.

As the days of the open range cattle industry faded, conflicts between powerful western cattle barons and the homesteaders who were settling on “their” lands were inevitable. The homesteaders had every right to claim their 320 acres of windswept grasslands but some old-time ranchers tried to discourage the settlers in hopes of preserving more rangeland for their cattle. Usually, such discouragement was limited to cowboys cutting the settlers’ barbed wire fences or diverting irrigation water, but the tactics occasionally became more violent.

A common complaint among ranchers was that many of the homesteaders were actually rustlers who stole their cows and horses. The ranchers’ accusations were surely exaggerated, but the charge of rustling allowed them to take drastic actions. Such may have been the case with Ella Watson and James Averell. Watson, a former prostitute from Kansas, came to Wyoming Territory in 1886. That same year, she received a license to wed James Averell, a Wyoming saloonkeeper who had a homestead on the Sweetwater River. The couple either never married or kept the union secret so that Watson could file a second homestead near Averell’s place. Both claims were located on lands claimed by the powerful rancher Albert Bothwell without legal foundation, and Bothwell used the lands for grazing his herds.

Bothwell–described as one of the most arrogant cattleman in the region–eventually accused both Watson and Averell of rustling. On this day in 1889, Bothwell and five of his men took the couple prisoner and hanged them. Although the men were later charged with murder, a pro-rancher jury acquitted them of any wrongdoing. It was the only incidence of a woman being executed–legally or illegally–in the history of Wyoming.

In the first major land battle of the Civil War, a large Union force under General Irvin McDowell is routed by a Confederate army under General Pierre G.T. Beauregard.

Three months after the Civil War erupted at Fort Sumter, Union military command still believed that the Confederacy could be crushed quickly and with little loss of life. In July, this overconfidence led to a premature offensive into northern Virginia by General McDowell. Searching out the Confederate forces, McDowell led 34,000 troops–mostly inexperienced and poorly trained militiamen–toward the railroad junction of Manassas, located just 30 miles from Washington, D.C. Alerted to the Union advance, General Beauregard massed some 20,000 troops there and was soon joined by General Joseph Johnston, who brought some 9,000 more troops by railroad.

On the morning of July 21, hearing of the proximity of the two opposing forces, hundreds of civilians–men, women, and children–turned out to watch the first major battle of the Civil War. The fighting commenced with three Union divisions crossing the Bull Run stream, and the Confederate flank was driven back to Henry House Hill. However, at this strategic location, Beauregard had fashioned a strong defensive line anchored by a brigade of Virginia infantry under General Thomas J. Jackson. Firing from a concealed slope, Jackson’s men repulsed a series of Federal charges, winning Jackson his famous nickname “Stonewall.”

Meanwhile, Confederate cavalry under J.E.B. Stuart captured the Union artillery, and Beauregard ordered a counterattack on the exposed Union right flank. The rebels came charging down the hill, yelling furiously, and McDowell’s line was broken, forcing his troops in a hasty retreat across Bull Run. The retreat soon became an unorganized flight, and supplies littered the road back to Washington. Union forces endured a loss of 3,000 men killed, wounded, or missing in action while the Confederates suffered 2,000 casualties. The scale of this bloodshed horrified not only the frightened spectators at Bull Run but also the U.S. government in Washington, which was faced with an uncertain military strategy in quelling the “Southern insurrection.”

More than a decade before Lewis and Clark, Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing north of Mexico.

A young Scotsman engaged in the fur trade out of Montreal, Mackenzie made his epic journey across the continent without any of the governmental financial backing and support given to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In 1787, he was assigned to the British North West Company’s fur trading post in what is now northern Alberta. Two years later, he led a small expedition north to the Great Slave Lake where he discovered the westward flowing river that now bears his name. To Mackenzie’s disappointment, he discovered that the river soon turned north and led to the Arctic Ocean rather than the Pacific.

The following year, he tried to reach the Pacific again. This time, he followed the Peace River west accompanied by a party of nine men. In June 1793, the expedition crossed the Continental Divide over an easily portaged pass of 3,000 feet. From there, they moved south down the Fraser River, which Mackenzie hoped was a tributary of the Columbia River. The Fraser River eventually proved impassable, however, and the expedition struck out overland to the west.

On this day in 1793, Mackenzie reached the Pacific Ocean across from what is today called Vancouver Island. Using a paint he concocted from grease and vermilion, he wrote on a rock: “Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada, by land, the twenty-second of July, one thousand seven hundred and ninety-three.” With this inscription, Great Britain staked its first tenuous claim on the northwest.

Aside from the Spanish explorers who had previously crossed the comparatively narrow Mexican land mass, Mackenzie was the first Euro-American to cross the North American continent to reach the Pacific Ocean. Yet, he considered his achievement to be “at least in part a failure” because he had failed to find a passable commercial route. Mackenzie later returned to Scotland and never returned to Canada. Twelve years later, the discoveries he made on his “failed” voyage played a key role in President Thomas Jefferson’s decision to send Lewis and Clark on their two-year journey to the Pacific.

When I first started reading the book about Lewis and Clark I was intrigued with the fact that there were Indians with blue eyes and light colored hair. But then I had to stop and realize that the French, Spanish and English had been roaming around that region for over 200 years prior to the Lewis and Clark expedition. I was even taken aback when I read that Daniel Boone had an estate in St Louis, when they started out they fired a cannon to pay tribute to him as they went by his place.

A native of Denmark, Kohrs immigrated to the United States in 1850 at the age of 15. Seeking his fortune, he headed west in hopes of finding a gold or silver mine. He had some small success in California and British Columbia, but the “big strike” eluded him. In 1862, he joined the latest western gold rush and headed for western Montana, where rich gold deposits had been found at Grasshopper Creek. There, Kohrs realized that he could make more money mining the miners than mining for gold. He established a butcher shop in the mining town of Bannack and began to prosper.

Working as a butcher led Kohrs into the cattle business. Cattle were in relatively short supply in frontier Montana, and Kohrs traveled around the territory to purchase prime animals. He had several brushes with the highwaymen who plagued the isolated roads of Montana. Determined to stop these murderous bandits, Kohrs joined a group of Virginia City vigilantes, and helped track down and hang the outlaws. By 1864, robberies in the territory had plummeted.

Increasingly, Kohrs began shifting the focus of his meat processing business to the supply side. In 1864, he established a large ranch near the town of Deer Lodge, where he fattened his cattle for market. Kohrs was virtually the only major rancher in the western region of the territory, and his business boomed as Montana grew. Eventually, competition from cattle driven overland into the territory from Texas began to challenge Kohrs’ monopoly. He continued to prosper, however, and remained the largest cattle rancher in Montana for several decades.

In 1885, Kohrs translated his economic strength into political power, winning election to the Montana Territorial Legislature. Kohrs and his fellow ranchers exercised considerable influence over Montana in the years to come, and Kohrs became a state senator in 1902. The big ranchers never had a free hand in Montana, however–mining interests and farmers always kept the ranchers in check.

Widely celebrated as one of the greatest pioneers in Montana history, Kohrs died in 1920 at the age of 85.

Benjamin Bonneville, an inept fur trader who some speculate may have actually been a spy, leads the first wagon train to cross the Rocky Mountains at Wyoming’s South Pass.

The motivations for Bonneville’s western expeditions have always remained somewhat mysterious. A native of France, Bonneville came to the United States in 1803 at the age of seven. He later graduated from West Point, and he served at frontier posts in Arkansas, Texas, and Indian Territory. According to one view, Bonneville simply observed the rapid growth of the western fur trade at these posts and conceived a bold plan to mount his own fur trading expedition. However, others suggest Bonneville’s true goal for the expedition may have been to serve as a Far Western spy for the U.S. government.

The circumstances of Bonneville’s entry into the fur business were indeed somewhat odd. Despite his complete lack of experience as a mountain man, a group of Manhattan businessmen agreed to back his expedition with ample funds. It was also strange that a career military man should ask for, and quickly receive, a two-year leave of absence from the army to pursue a strictly commercial adventure.

Bonneville began his expedition in May 1832, and that summer he and his men built an imposing trading post along Wyoming’s Green River. Bonneville proved to be an incompetent fur trader, yet he seemed unconcerned about making a profit. By contrast, he seemed very interested in exploring the vast territory.

Shortly after arriving in Wyoming, he mounted an expedition to the Columbia River country of Oregon, although he was well aware that the powerful British-owned Hudson’s Bay Company dominated the region. On this day in 1832, Bonneville led 110 men and 20 wagons across South Pass, the first-ever wagon crossing of that critical route connecting the existing United States to the northwest region of the continent. During the next two decades, thousands of American settlers would take their wagons across South Pass as they followed the Oregon Trail.

In 1835, Bonneville returned to Washington, where President Andrew Jackson personally oversaw his reinstatement as a captain in the army. Some historians speculate that Bonneville might have actually been a spy for a U.S. government, which was eager to collect information on the British strength in the Northwest. No historical records have ever been found to substantiate this speculation, though, and it is possible that Bonneville was simply an inept fur trader whose dreams exceeded his grasp.

Benjamin Bonneville, an inept fur trader who some speculate may have actually been a spy, leads the first wagon train to cross the Rocky Mountains at Wyoming’s South Pass.

The motivations for Bonneville’s western expeditions have always remained somewhat mysterious. A native of France, Bonneville came to the United States in 1803 at the age of seven. He later graduated from West Point, and he served at frontier posts in Arkansas, Texas, and Indian Territory. According to one view, Bonneville simply observed the rapid growth of the western fur trade at these posts and conceived a bold plan to mount his own fur trading expedition. However, others suggest Bonneville’s true goal for the expedition may have been to serve as a Far Western spy for the U.S. government.

The circumstances of Bonneville’s entry into the fur business were indeed somewhat odd. Despite his complete lack of experience as a mountain man, a group of Manhattan businessmen agreed to back his expedition with ample funds. It was also strange that a career military man should ask for, and quickly receive, a two-year leave of absence from the army to pursue a strictly commercial adventure.

Bonneville began his expedition in May 1832, and that summer he and his men built an imposing trading post along Wyoming’s Green River. Bonneville proved to be an incompetent fur trader, yet he seemed unconcerned about making a profit. By contrast, he seemed very interested in exploring the vast territory.

Shortly after arriving in Wyoming, he mounted an expedition to the Columbia River country of Oregon, although he was well aware that the powerful British-owned Hudson’s Bay Company dominated the region. On this day in 1832, Bonneville led 110 men and 20 wagons across South Pass, the first-ever wagon crossing of that critical route connecting the existing United States to the northwest region of the continent. During the next two decades, thousands of American settlers would take their wagons across South Pass as they followed the Oregon Trail.

In 1835, Bonneville returned to Washington, where President Andrew Jackson personally oversaw his reinstatement as a captain in the army. Some historians speculate that Bonneville might have actually been a spy for a U.S. government, which was eager to collect information on the British strength in the Northwest. No historical records have ever been found to substantiate this speculation, though, and it is possible that Bonneville was simply an inept fur trader whose dreams exceeded his grasp.

Guess the guvment has been covering up their sneaky illegal crap for even longer than I thought.

_________________Those who trade liberty for security shall have neither.

"Take ye heed,watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is".

Rev. 6:8 and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was death , and Hell followed with him.